BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Tyson, the documentary is a new film:

When I saw Tyson fight in his younger days, even before he became Heavyweight Champion of the World, when there was only one Heavyweight Champ, I thought that no one would beat him until he would be in his late thirties. I thought he was the only champ who would beat Joe Louis' record 12 year reign...

To me he was furious, the fiercest, most fearsome boxer that I had ever seen. I wanted to check his gloves for the horseshoes that must have been there.

(My father, the real expert, an amateur boxer in his lightweight days, and a real fan, and, further, unlike me, a man who had actually seen fights in person since his short pants days, did not agree -- but he was wrong -- the only time.) --

Dad gave the tip of his hat to Joe Louis, Muhammad Ali, and Rocky Marciano. -- and he wasn't sure about Ali. (But, as I said, he was wrong...)

And then I heard Tyson on the radio with Joyce Carol Oates ( a boxing fan who had written a non-fiction book called "On Boxing," and the "Amazin' Bill Mazer, a man with total recall, who knew everything there was to know about every fighter going back and probably beyond barefisted days, beyond Sullivan, Fitzsimmons and Corbett.

But Mike Tyson, the lispy kid fighter, from Brownsville, who owned the Undisputed World's Heavyweight Championship, was right up there with the Amazin' One, and with Joyce Carol Oates, holding his own in the kind of conversation that Norman Mailer had with Jose Torres, Pete Hamill, and Budd Schulberg.

From that moment on I became a Tyson fan, and his unexpected, shocking downfall has been a twenty year disappointment to me.

The movie opens only in NYC and LA, so you lucky ones who live there should go to see it no matter what you think of Mike The Tragic Tyson. We can all learn, even at this age, from our fallen idols. (Well, Joyce, you're not up there with the rest of us, but you will be.)

mek

Here's something I wrote 12 months ago:

Other important matters: recently a book on boxing was written in England. Joyce Carol Oates reviewed it in the New York Review and she mentioned something similar. You may not be aware of this but Oates is an expert on boxing and a fan. I heard her several years ago, with supralapsarian Mike Tyson (also an authority on the history of boxing) and the Amazin' Mazur, a sports announcer with an encyclopedic memory. She fit right in. And Tyson was pretty good too!

This is Oates writing:

"The symbolism of boxing does not allow for ambiguity: it is as middleweight Albert Camus put it, 'utterly Manichean.' The rites of boxing 'simplify' everything. Good and evil, the winner and the loser. "

Later she writes,: Here's "a quote attributed to Sonny Liston: ' It's always the same story--the good guy verses the bad guy.' "

What strikes me here is not so much that Camus and Liston arrive at the same conclusion, but rather that Liston's expression is so perfect, so succinct. The simple use of the five cent word instead of the two dollar word.

Anagram for Consumer Reports

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

IRONY

Anagram for Consumer Reports

"More Corruptness"

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

__________________________________________________________________

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Letter to Basil:

When I was about thirty-five or so I went to the cemetery to visit the graves of my grandfather and several other relatives who are buried in a landsman section of Mt. Hebron in Flushing. Our site is a nice one, on a hill facing Flushing Meadow Park, the lake, and in the distance the city can be seen. There are about twenty-five Katz' buried there.

I arrived at the cemetery and had a map, the location marked by Section, Row and Grave Number, but Mt. Hebron is very large and I had difficulty finding the site. A man, bearded and hatted -- I assumed a religious man -- approached me and offered to lead me to the site. How nice, I thought, and I followed him through the high grass and down the road, across a tiny bridge, and then up a little hillside to the site. I "introduced" him to my Great-Grandfather, Abraham and his wife, Zipporah; and my grandfather, Aaron, and his wife, Masha; and my Uncle Max and Aunt Sylvia; and all the cousins and aunts and uncles, most of whom I had never met in life, but had "met" and learned about them, at their gravesides at Mt. Hebron.

As we spoke I came to understand that he was a professional mourner -- I had seen them before but none had ever approached my father or me when we went to the cemetery together, because the only times we ever went to Mt. Hebron were for someone's funeral, and of course, there were plenty of rabbis and mourners at those funerals, which were a family gathering of sort, and which paradoxically were usually almost pleasant affairs, as we would bury one of the cousins, who invariably would have been in their nineties and each of whom had lived fruitful and eventful lives. Even the black sheep of the family, Bernie Shatskin, a lawyer, who anticipated the machinations of Bernie Madoff is buried there, and, I guess forgiven all his sins.

The man, by now my good friend, suggested that I might like to say Kaddish for my grandparents and uncle and aunt. I understood that a gratuity would be expected and agreed that Kaddish would be a good idea. He offered me a yarmulke and I put it on so that he would begin. As he got into the prayers and then the Kaddish I was overwhelmed by a deep sadness for all that had been lost, for the history of the Katz', for the thousand years of struggle that had led us to America and then without gratitude we had given up our heritage, given up our birthright, like Jacob, and then we had given up all of our millenniums of Jewish heritage .

I began to sob uncontrollably, I wasn't able to catch my breath, I could think only of my ancestors wandering from the East and finding themselves in the frozen waste of Russia, but carrying with them all of the traditions of the Jews, within the struggle, the pogroms, and I cried, choking on my inability to breathe. I noticed that my friend, the mourner was standing by me, patiently waiting, and I thought that he was so wonderful, standing by me, making sure that I wouldn't have a heart attack and die right on the spot, right atop my grandfather's grave, and that this man, previously a stranger to me, was waiting, watching over me, making sure that would be okay -- and then I remembered the honorarium and without a sound I stuffed a ten dollar bill into his hand, but he waited again, just standing beside me, and I couldn't talk, my throat constricted, my tongue swollen in my mouth, without speech and he, this angel in disguise, was still standing, silent beside me...what a wonderful man, I thought.

Finally, after more time, he did speak-- "Mister," he said, "Mister, could I have mine yarmulke?"

mek

Reply from Basil:

I understand what you felt Mike, but I do not have those feelings
myself. In any case, not about the history of my family up to and
including my parents. I just don't connect. But that does not mean I
don't have similar feelings.

When my grandmother died we had the funeral at the Riverside Chapel in
Brooklyn which I'm sure you know of. What I knew was that my grandmother
had made a friend of a man at the old age home she was staying at. This
man was a cantor in his earlier life and demanded that he sing kaddish
for my grandmother.

We had never met him before and when he showed up we
were astonished at his appearance. He was in his seventies. His hair was
died black. His eyebrows were plucked and penciled. His cheeks were
rouged. He wore a dark cloak. He was obviously not gay. He was as much a
performer as a cantor.

If his appearance was astonishing his voice was
even more so. His singing voice was more of a harsh croaking even though
every Hebrew word of kaddish was understandable. It was as if he was
singing not only for my grandmother but for every Jew who ever died. The
power in his singing was enormous. For that I could not hold back the
tears and I couldn't understand why I was crying.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Life Of Werner Von Braun:

"I Aim at the Stars -- (But Sometimes I Hit London.) "
Mort Saul

"Things are so bad that the mice are giving themselves up to the cat. "
Harold Lloyd

"He's so tough he wouldn't eat Lady Fingers unless they had brass knuckles."
Harold Lloyd

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Dialog from a French Movie?

An actress encounters a doctor at a cocktail party.

Actress: "Ah, Doctor, how fortuitous--I have a sore throat and I must sing tomorrow night."

Doctor: "Come to my office tomorrow at four. I'll take care of you."

The following day at four.

Doctor:" I see you have come on time."

Actress: "Yes, but the office is empty, just you and me."

Doctor: "I thought I might help you in private. "

Actress: "Doctor, I hope you are not one of those men who would take advantage of the situation."

Doctor: "Ah, my dear, I am perfectly innocent."

Actress: "Oh, 'perfectly innocent?' -- Then you are one of those really dangerous men.--you should know that I do not enjoy a ten minute screw on the corner of a man's desk."

Doctor: "I can see that you are not that type of woman."
Actress: "I have only my throat to offer you."

Doctor: "Ah, I thought so -- a perfect woman."

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Jabberwocky

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

'Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!'

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood a while in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One two! One two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

'And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
Oh frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Lewis Carroll

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

From April 10, 2006

It's Passover and you're out of Mogen David:

Now Maria's making charoses
She's using Dubonnet
You might think it to be atrocious
-- But it's better than Chardonnay.

mek

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

I have always been rasped by the banal. But how can that be? I am one of the bourgeois manque, defective, never having achieved what I might have, certainly never having met my own expectations. I spend too much of my time repining after the lost and gone. It's a fugitive pain, now here, now not, but always that stab of longing and regret.

Thomas Mann mentions the bliss of the commonplace. The seductive beauty of innocent bliss, even the seduction of the banal. I feel sorrow for my loss of naivete-- but that seems so commonplace too--nostalgic, if you will.

I know my writings are deeply felt--by me--but they are, sadly, inept.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

From Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart:

"As a man dances the drums beat for him."

There were outsiders who wept louder than the bereaved."

"On Sundays he always imagined that the sermons were preached for the benefit of his enemies."

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

The Mirror In The Front Hall

The luxurious house had a huge mirror
in the front hall, a very old mirror,
bought at least eighty years ago.

A good-looking boy, a tailor's assistant
(on Sundays an amateur athlete),
stood there with a package. He gave it to one of the household
who took it in to get the receipt.
The tailor's assistant,
left alone as he waited,
went up to the mirror, looked at himself,
and adjusted his tie. Five minutes later
they brought him the receipt. He took it and went away.

But the old mirror that had seen so much
in its long life-
thousands of objects, faces-
the old mirror was full of joy now,
proud to have embraced
total beauty for a few moments.

Constantine P. Cavafy

Walls

With no consideration, no pity, no shame,
they have built walls around me, thick and high.
And now I sit here feeling hopeless.
I can't think of anything else: this fate gnaws my mind -
because I had so much to do outside.
When they were building the walls, how could I not have noticed!
But I never heard the builders, not a sound.
Imperceptibly they have closed me off from the outside world.

Constantine P. Cavafy

Comment: We'll have to find a better translation of Walls, a poem with much meaning for me; "who built these walls? -- me," for starters.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

El Gaviero says:
-
"Even though obviously I am going to die someday, as long as I live I am immortal."
-
"They're old friends, so old that everything's already been said."
-
And one more, El Gaviero quotes Sancho Panzo:
-
"Each man is how God made him. Some even worse."

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com
Gommorah:

The Mafia without Hollywood Glamor.

This is a picture of the Mafia that we don't get from Hollywood. Uneducated men who live dirty, crude and sweaty, without Mafia "honor." Huge profits going to unseen men while the underlings scramble for euros and cheat each other. Mafia widows nickle & dimed out of their promised Mafia pensions...A land (Sicily) destroyed by illegal pollution and deliberate use of the land for cheap illegal toxic waste disposal...it goes on and on.

This is more a documentary than a fiction.

I don't know whether to recommend it--maybe you already know its subject matter. But you never saw the type of camera work used here. It matches the story exactly. Cheap, crude, dusty. And every actor seems to have been taken straight from prison...

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Sloth makes all things difficult, but industry makes all things easy. unknown

What we have often starts to own us. Goenka Chanting

Translations (like wives) are seldom strictly faithful if they are in the least attractive. unknown

Unemployment Insurance: Continued Claims Over 5.5 Million

Unemployment Insurance: Continued Claims Over 5.5 Million

Posted using ShareThis

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

One thing about a diet: there are a lot fewer dishes to wash. mek

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Wall Street, often ahead of the rest of us, seems to disagree with your evaluation of the first weeks of President Obama's administration.

And your evaluation of the man who brought us to the point of national bankruptcy on financial as well as on political ground is very interesting, though skewed somewhat to the right.

I am always amazed at the blindness of conservatives. Tell me how many recruits to terror has the war on terror garnered since Bush has been in office. Tell me how much Blood and Treasure has been wasted on an unnecessary war.

Under President Bush financial regulations were ignored or tossed, and we find ourselves broke. Our country has the 27th best record for medical care in the industrialized world. There aren't many industrialized countries behind us. We have over 47 million folks without any insurance and our auto industry is collapsing. We exported millions of jobs overseas and now we are losing millions more jobs even without exporting the jobs. People are hanging out on corners.

I live on the beach in Ft. Lauderdale. Recently people have started sleeping on the beach.

I find it notable and just plain stupid that the auto industry never called for Single Payer Universal Health Care even though they knew that employer based insurance was costing them more than steel, and was costing them market share, and finally, was driving them out of business. Why not? They were stifled, blinded by rusty ideological beliefs that were imposed on them by the libertarian-conservative brain-washing in the medea.You know who I mean, Ayn Rand was only a writer. Milton Friedman is dead but this debacle is burying his coffin even deeper. This is the second or maybe third death for poor Milton.

In February of 2003 you wrote,

'Almost all of them have a strong ideological bias against making individuals primarily responsible for their own retirement income and a sharp distaste for programs that benefit “the rich." ' Imagine if you had gotten your way and everyone had their retirement money invested in the market. Now, social security seems a lot more secure for the average man. Can you imagine the average citizen choosing his own investments? Crazy?

I see that you are an expert on pension and benefit plans. I am an amateur and only know about the one in which my employees participated. Employers contributed around 6% of payroll, the fund (multi-employer Taft Hartley) grew to almost $10 Billion. During the last 28 months the fund shrunk to $8.75 Billion.From what I hear the employees are okay and the fund will continue to pay pensions.

But what about the Benefit plan? Well, that costs a lot more. Close to 21% of payroll. the workers, on average, are at the low end of hourly workers. The fund takes in about a billion dollars a year and pays it all out. It's a generous plan that up now had no co-pays and paid for almost everything, excepting dental, and covers prescriptions in full when Medicare pays for other expenses.

Pretty good for the employees, right? Tough on us employers. But what is the per-capita cost? 2006 cost per covered life was $3800.

There are about 400,000 beneficiaries and 150,000 active workers.

The plan covers from pre-natal, through age 65 and continues to pay for rxs until death. No co-pays. (I think that is going to change)

The cost per active employee is around $7800. The one factor which I cannot calculate is the effect of COBs(Coordination of Benefits) which occurs when each spouse has benefits from two different benefit plans. I think that this is a significant number which, if known, would increase the true cost per covered life.

I understand that Medicare's administrative cost is less than 3%, our administrative cost is less than 7% -- and insurance companies administrative costs plus profits range as high as 22%.

If the USA had a Single Payer Universal Health Care plan in place it would cost less than the $3800 that our plan costs. But let's say it costs $3800 per capita. 300,000,000 citizens times $3800 is 1.14 Trillion dollars.

But wait! Subtract from that 1.14 trillion dollars the 1.4 Trillion dollars that we are currently spending on health care for a 353,000,000, people, leaving out 47 million people, and you can see that we would save money and cover more lives with a well run Single Payer (yes, that means the government) Universal Health Care program.

Most docs and hospital administrators agree with me.

Worried about government bureaucrats? What about Insurance company administrators who decide what meds you may take and what docs you may see?

It's very important to think for the other side and to converse with knowledgeable people on the other side too. I am sure that you know some professionals with brains equal to yours. Call them.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

A friend gave my son four tickets to a Ranger game.

Decent seats, but not the best in the house--$165 each! He took my granddaughter and two of her friends--10 year old girls, but sports nuts.
Then he spent $40 for hot dogs and sodas!. Just think:

$660 for tickets
$30 for food
$20 ? for taxi.

$710. Now my son's friend apparently has these tickets as a season ticket.I guess when he goes it's all adults-- How much do they spend on food and beer?

Who goes to these things?

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Several Favorite American Novels Not Read Since High School:
The Jungle, Upton Sinclair
Arrowsmith, Sinclair Lewis
U.S.A., John Dos Passos
Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
Studs Lonigan, James T. Farrell
Look Homeward, Angel, Thomas Wolfe
The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
Appointment in Samarra, John O'Hara
The Postman Always Rings Twice, James M. Cain
Moby Dick, Herman Melville
Absalom, Absalom, William Faulkner

____________________________
Some remembered Important Books read in High School

The Education of Henry Adams
An American Doctor's Odyssey ( ? )
Microbes & Men (?) was this in High School?

__________________________________________
A Mindsetting Book of Essays read at Horace Mann

A Preface to Our Day. --essays by :
Geo. Bernard Shaw, On Literature
Fredrich Hayek, Free Market Economist (before Ayn Rand) economist
G.D.H. Cole, a Fabian, Historian, Novelist, Intellectual Labor Party Activist
S.I. Hayawaka, Linguist, Congressman, War Hero.
Aldous Huxley, On the future. __I must find this and see what he predicted___
J.B. Priestly, On Science
Herbert Hoover, on Economics
Chas. Darwin, Of course, on Evolution
Sidney & Beatrice Webb, American Socialists, NYU Economists
and many others

___________________________________

Some other literature read at Horace Mann

Hamlet
Macbeth
Richard the Third
Ivanhoe
Paradise Lost (Liked it. saw Satin as the hero)
Brothers Karamozov
War & Peace (Too long, didn't finish until my thirties)
Pride & Prejudice (hated it)
Crime and Punishment
Several John Marquand novels that I liked (summer stuff)

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

For my Aunt Anne and my mother, who called her Annie Laurie

The earliest known version by Lady John was published by James Lindsay of Glasgow and is:

Maxwelton's braes are bonnie,
Where early fa's the dew,
'Twas there that Annie Laurie
Gi'ed me her promise true.
Gi'ed me her promise true -
Which ne'er forgot will be,
And for bonnie Annie Laurie
I'd lay me down and dee.

Her brow is like the snaw-drift,
Her neck is like the swan,
Her face it is the fairest,
That 'er the sun shone on.
That 'er the sun shone on -
And dark blue is her e'e,
And for bonnie Annie Laurie
I'd lay me down and dee.

Like dew on gowans lying,
Is the fa' o' her fairy feet,
And like winds, in simmer sighing,
Her voice is low and sweet.
Her voice is low and sweet -
And she's a' the world to me;
And for bonnie Annie Laurie
I'd lay me down and dee.